I have a 160 gig hard disk with a 145 gig partition containing MS Windows XP home and a 10 gig partition containing a compaq windows restore program. I intend to change this to multiple partitions mainly to install various flavors of linux. I'd like to get it to a 65 gig partition for windows, and two 40 gig partitions for linux. I intend to use the linux GPARTED partition manager. Before I do any of this I want to back up my 145 gig partition using ghost. My question is once I have the 145 gig image made will I be able to restore it to the 65 meg partition? Or in case of difficulty will I have to restore the 145 gig partition first? The main reason I want an image backup is in case of hard disk failure.

Another precaution and consideration that helps is to completely defrag your 145 gb partition so that ALL the data is on the "left" of the partition. The default Windows XP defrag won't do this, but the two popular defrag programs, Diskeeper and PerfectDisk 8, both will do that.

This is important because Ghost is a sector backup program and you don't want sector 1 and sectors at 145gb area both in use, or else you will always need 145 gb.

I will be using Ghost 9. Thanks for the tip about using a defrag program that moves everything towards the start (Left) of the disk data. I wondered about windows defrag and why it appears to not do this. Currently all my programs and data take about 16 gig on drive C. I am planning on installing 64-bit ubuntu linux.

Yes I think once I get the C: drive to 65 meg I will want to reimage it at that size. Last night I dnloaded Perfectdisk - evaluation copy (30 days) and defragged my C: drive. Using the "consolidate free space" mode it seemed to move all the files contiguously to the beginning of the disk. I don't know if I will need to use perfectdisk anymore after this. The goal was to just get all the files consolidated at the beggining. I am going to image to DVD disks next.

well I guess I ought to put getting a slave hd on my to-do list. My computer is still pretty new and it is an OEM system. So even adding a second hard disk is not easy for me. Im being very careful and deliberate about makinga backup of it. I am seeking to make a DVD backup first because it is something that I can do in the absense of another hard disk.

I wish I knew more about how many DVDs this will take. I count 4 DVDsneeded for 17 gb. Is this number reasonable? I have a 10-pack of 4.7 GigDVDs of which I used two alredy.

How will the data on the DVDs be set up. Will it be like one large.GHO file spanned across the DVDs? Also it is my understanding thatin case of a restore being needed that I must boot with the Ghost boot CD, e.e. the original program cd then tell it to restore from DVD and put in the DVDs until the restore is complete.

My current Hard disk is an IDE type. I am not sure of the number of IDE connectors available.I will check to see if it is set as Master on the cable. As I said this is a Compaq OEM computer so thereforre modding and upgrading is not easy.

As I said this is a Compaq OEM computer so thereforre modding and upgrading is not easy.

Physically--it may be easier than you think--but be aware that some OEM's have restrictions on user upgrades and the warranty they offer--sometimes you have to have the OEM add additional hardware in order to maintain the warranty.

I worked on a friend's Compaq desktop a while back--adding a HDD required removing the front plastic face plate. Required a flashlite and some looking to find the plastic locking tabs that had to be pushed to one side to release the face plate.

The HDD's and optical drives had special screws that slid into tracks and there was a plastic locking tab that the back screws slid under. *Extra screws* were screwed into the metal part of the case under the plastic face plate--so just had to take those off the case and screwed them into the proper mounting holes to match the original HDD's setup. There was already an extra empty slot for the added HDD to slide into.

The IDE connector ribbon had two connectors for two HDD's--and at least on his system *Master* and *Slave* were printed on the ribbon next to the corresponding connector--it used *cable select* on the HDD's--so the position on the cable (i.e. which connector you used for which HDD) determined the status of the HDD.

Using a USB External HDD on my system is about 4 to 5 times faster than when using optical media to burn an image to--but the USB option is only about half as fast as having a second internal HDD to image to--your results will be different depending on your system!

[Edited by El_Pescador on April 16th] El_Pescador has mentioned a good deal on External USB HDD at the link below (price and availability remain the same, but FREE SHIPPING now discontinued):

I have ghosted my drive C: now. On the 142 Gig drive C partition there was 19 gigs of programs and data and Ghost 9 produced 4 DVDimages. Took about 2 hours. I ran Perfectdisk defragment program (trial)just before ghosting. It moved files to the front of the disk but left metafiles in the middle of the partition. I am dissappointed that it did notmove all the files to the front of the partition. It was hard to make outwhere these metafiles are located such as what % of the partition outof the 142 gig they are located. Its somewhere in the middle. I guessif I restore this image it will put the metafiles in approximately the samelocations. So I do not know how large to make the new smaller partitionfor windows drive C:. Hoepfully the repartitioning will not affect mywindows installation so I will not need to restore. I am going to use theGparted tool (linux). Alternatively if I install ubuntu linux it will allowme to split the partition instead of using Gparted.